Slashdot Mirror
Will Electric Cars and Solar Power Make Gasoline and Utilities Obsolete?
cartechboy writes "Since the dawn of time (or modern civilization) two things have happened: utility companies have made money by selling us electricity, and oil companies make money by selling us gasoline. But is it possible we are on the verge of upsetting this status quo? Tony Seba, an entrepreneur and lecturer at Standford University, is writing a book in which he essentially predicts electric cars and solar power will make gasoline and utilities obsolete by 2030. How, you might ask? In his book, titled Disrupting Energy: How Silicon Valley Is Making Coal, Nuclear, Oil And Gas Obsolete, he predicts that as people buy electric cars the interest in clean energy will increase because who wouldn't want 'free travel'? Combining the use of solar panels and electric cars, consumers would be able to do just that. The miles electric cars travel on grid energy stored in their batteries eliminates the demand for gasoline, and it turns out many electric-car owners have solar panels on their homes while eliminates or dramatically reduces their dependence on utilities. So as the amount of electric cars on the road increases, the cost of both solar panels electric-car battery packs will decrease, right?"
No.
Sure. Just show me the batteries that match gasoline in terms of energy per unit weight/volume, cycle life, and charge speed.
Betteridge is really on form today.
Better bring that Coleman stove. Oh wait...
I think modern civilization existed long before electricity and gasoline.
Mr Hubbert's predictions say gasoline will be pretty much obsolete by 2050 whatever happens.
Where do people think the electricity to charge their electric cars come from? The electric fairy? Most electricity today is provided by coal, oil, and natural gas. All fossil fuels. Keep buying those electric cars and telling yourself you're doing your part. You're just putting your part off on someone else (the utility company)
Who lumped nuclear in there? As long as a nuclear plant has US standards for quality and testing instead of Japanese standards, we're all set. I do still prefer solar and wind but I wouldn't lump nuclear in with oil and gas since it doesn't produce CO2.
God I hope so. Course we'll continue to need to burn stuff for the big trips (aerospace whatsits).
Electric cars, car parts, batteries, home support equipment, on road support, solar panels, all not free and MUCH more expensive than gasoline alternatives.
People will switch when the overall costs of E cars are lower.
This will be sooner than later as the costs of everything petroleum based will be raised artificially by your friendly govt.
Contrary to the write-up, civilization has not been using oil (nor gas) very much for centuries. Man has sailed with, well, sails for thousands of years.
However, when the opportunity arose, using Sun's concentrated energy proved rather attractive to all. And so it will remain until we find a way to stuff the comparable amounts of energy per unit of volume as the "fossil fuels" contain.
Imagine a solar-powered aircraft carrier... Yes, you can!
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I miss you early 2000s /.
Those free solar panels and non-premium prices battery cars. Yeah, right.
yes
Will we some day go all electric? Probably.
Is it going to happen any time soon?
Fuck no!
Petroleum is still too (relatively) cheap and still far better in the energy density department.
Additionally, the infrastructure just isn't there to make electric viable enough yet.
MAYBE 50-100 years from now.
But right now we're comparing Orville and Wilbur Wright against an F-35 Lightning II.
Of COURSE it's going to be found wanting...
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
This guy is clearly a theorist and not a realist.
There is no power plant outside of diesel and nuclear that can provide sufficient power to move a cargo ship that is so critical to global trade.
There is no electric motor that can be provide enough power to match a diesel engine in an 18 wheeler truck that is so critical to national trade in every country.
There is no solar panel remotely efficient enough that you can have it small enough to provide sufficient power for a diesel truck to make deliveries.
Solar utilities are not remotely efficient enough to provide enough electricity if you had a massive swing to electric cars; even 10% of the US's cars on the road switched to electric would destabilize a grid powered on solar power. Nuclear supported by fossil is by far the most cost efficient and supply efficient methods.
Solar is inefficient at meeting the hourly changes in demand for power as there is no sufficient energy storage technology available on a utility scale nor is there any in the next 10-15 years.
Nuclear is by far the cleanest technology available when you factor in the environmental impact of the materials used in constructing solar panels, but it also doesn't scale well which means until good energy storage comes available, only coal and natural gas are capable of powering the grid and match the demand.
Solar and electric cars will not change the world because mass adoption won't happen. Solar and electric cars will be a symptom of utility scale energy storage technology.
"Disrupting Energy: How Silicon Valley Is Making Coal, Nuclear, Oil And Gas Obsolete,"
Oil isn't going to be obsolete so soon. AFAIK the DoD will make synthetic jet fuel when necessary. Will take a while before there's a 900kph battery powered aircraft that can cross the Atlantic or Pacific. Supersonic will be harder.
I do wonder about cargo ships. Will we go back to wind powered ones?
First fucker to mention his 'law' (it isn't) and the planet gets it!
The key here is the question specifically about *solar* power. When you look at the sum total amount of energy we consume, I think you'll find that you'd have to blanket a pretty significant portion of the usable surface of the earth with panels to provide all of it, if you went strictly solar.
(From a solar energy FAQ):
Q: How much roof space is needed?
A: A rule of thumb is 100 sq. ft. per every kilowatt (kW) of electricity the PV system produces. Module efficiency correlates with the power that is generated in a given amount of roof space. For basic planning purposes, a good rule of thumb is 10-12 watts per square foot.
10-12 watts of power generated per square foot just isn't a heck of a lot, in the grand scheme of things.
You have to couple that with the fact that battery storage isn't anywhere near 100% efficient. (Batteries "leak" power even when they sit idle for a while.)
I think electric cars will have growing usefulness, but not everyplace gets a lot of sunshine during the average day. So even companies setting up solar charging stations in parking spaces for people to plug in vehicles during the work day won't be an adequate solution everywhere.
Ultimately, I see a situation where we substitute some fossil fuel use for increased nuclear power (for the big energy generation happening at large power plants), some hydrogen fuel cell tech gaining acceptance, solar and batteries as supplemental power where applicable, a little wind energy (again where applicable), and in the shorter-term at least, more use of natural gas vs. oil or coal.
There is certainly a place for solar. But at 1 kw/m^2 at noon on a cloudless day, times whatever percentage efficiency of the cells... it isn't going to be the whole solution. Not even in California.
Not gonna happen in 16 years = NFW.
First of all, the incumbent businesses are going to lobby lobby lobby for laws to slow down, if not stop, the destruction of their business. The argument is going to be along the lines of "for the consumer's safety..." ; "think about the workers" and "think about the suppliers" - sort of like the arguments for the bail-out of GM.
Secondly, they will drag their feet. They will also lobby how they will need more time to "integrate" the new technologies, blah blah blah - just see how the utilities reacted to pollution control. They dragged their feet for decades and lobbied continuously for more time. They still are.
Third. The bond holders. Unless those bonds are re-callable, the bonds will have to be purchased on the open market.
Then there are the other interests: the coal producers and the citizens of the states that mine it; the oil & gas people; the politicians who are in the pockets of those interests.
Gasoline will not go away completely because there will always be a group of people who want their internal combustion engine stuff. Horses and buggies never went completely away, did they.
I see - maybe being very optimistic - it happening in 2050. 2014 + 30 years (bonds) + fudge factor for stalling.
Solar and wind energy are not producing energy all the time. When there is no wind, wind turbine will not produce energy. When it is night, solar will not produce energy.
Storing energy is quite difficult and ineeficient. So it is not realistic to stay we will store solar energy for when it is night.
The energy consumption is not constant over time, you need to be able to deliver the proper amount of energy at any time. This is why nuclear power plant did not make coal power plant obsolete. Because starting a nuclear powerplant takes a long time, while a coal one is much faster.
I do not think we should rely on a single energy source. We need to rely on a mix of energy sources so that when one fails, other ones can pick up the pieces.
Just at the point that becomes true, flying cars* will change everything and we'll be fuel-hungry again for every last source.
Maybe the oil industry will finally do the R&D needed to get flying cars* up if they see their revenue drying up. They have the deep pockets for R&D, unlike Joe Garage Tinkerer. Gaining future markets is a mild motivator for R&D, but rescuing a dying cash cow is a huge motivator.
* Or personal vertical-take-off plane/copter hybrids like Puffin project. Probably computer-controlled to avoid collisions.
Table-ized A.I.
I've always seen our relationship with fossil fuels as a duel edged sword. First edge, they are the only reason we live in the advanced world we currently do. No oil or coal, no modern living as we now know.
But, they are a finite resource. Oil is what I worry about the most (if you buy into abiotic oil I've got quite a few bridges you may be interested in, on sale this week).
The other edge of the sword is the fact that we are fully dependent on fossil fuels. If alternative energy resources are not developed before fossil fuel resources decrease/"get really expensive" then we are screwed.
If alternatives can be developed to allow a smooth (where smooth can include a 3-day shadow, it cannot be easy given our current dependence) transition off of fossil fuel dependence then we can continue on our merry way (with less energy I guarantee, but if alternatives are mature enough before problems occur things will be much smoother).
Can the market pull it off? Maybe. I'm not too optimistic, I figure the banks would have to be involved in alternative energy development since they can't fail...
BlameBillCosby.com
This has to be stopped. It will only serve to deprive companies of the profits they're entitled to, and completely ruin the economy.
Free energy is practically communism. And communism is un-American.
If someone isn't profiting off the needs of other people, then that is EVIL.
God hisself has decreed that Capitalism is the one true system, and anything else is completely unacceptable.
Sure. Just show me the batteries that match gasoline in terms of energy per unit weight/volume, cycle life, and charge speed.
That's today's technology. If battery tech keeps going the way it's going, it'll be where it needs to be in 2030 for the book's premise to come true- if not sooner.
It seems the vast majority of professional chefs and most home cooks prefer to cook with gas. Electric ranges aren't as quick to turn on and off, and stay hot longer, so they're slightly more dangerous.
Thinking seriously about adding a solar panel + inverter + storage option for electric car charging and air conditioning, my biggest electricity usage needs. Each of these could be interrupted briefly for switchover to power company feeds without degradation in service, unlike using the solar electricity for normal household power. Since we live in an area that has abundant sunshine and high electric costs, this would seem to me to be the low-hanging fruit for solar electricity and would avoid policy and contract issues with our local power provider. So how about a few practical posts from people who have information to share, and less hyperventilating about politics and policy?
Did the mass adoption of electric heaters make wood-burning fireplaces obsolete?
There's your answer.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
We still have a ways to go until batteries are energy dense enough, and solar panels are affordable enough to create, to make this sort of thing viable for "most people".
Regarding batteries: I think most people will not be willing to accept a significant drop in the range of their car. There are electric-drive hybrids like the Volt, which backs up a mediocre electric range with gasoline, but that definitely won't bankrupt the gasoline companies if they're still making money when your batteries run low. There are some people who could justify never needing to drive more miles in a single go than an electric car can provide, but this doesn't account for things like getting stuck in traffic in sub-zero temperatures and burning down your battery with the heat on, or having to make a sudden trip to the airport to pick up a relative due to a family emergency. With the typical range of 400+ miles of a gasoline-powered vehicle, these unplanned excursions are almost always doable, and if not, you can make a stop and refuel in minutes, instead of the hours it takes to recharge a battery pack. We'd need an absolute revolution in battery technology for anything to change in this space, and although Slashdot seems to run a weekly story about how the new batteries based on some new tech are going to be awesome, I have yet to see any show up in my laptops or for sale in electric cars. There's always a fatal downside that makes the product unsaleable, unsafe, or uneconomical.
Regarding solar panels: they still cost too much to produce, and they still don't convert enough of the sunlight into usable electricity, to be generally useful. I've read the same stories as everyone else about lab experiments with carbon nanotubes and "photovoltaic paint", but it's still just an experiment. It has to be ridiculously cheap and ridiculously mass-producible to be useful on any sort of meaningful scale. Even if the technology is proven 100% viable, it will undoubtedly take a very long time until it can be mass-produced. Not to mention that all known methods of producing solar panels require significant petroleum product inputs, and have to be replaced every few years (more often if you're in an area that gets, for instance, hail storms or high winds). They're also very impractical in certain geographical locations where there are long periods of very low daylight: not only does it take longer to reap your ROI in these cases, but you also have to rig up a second, more reliable backup energy source for the times when you've got poor daylight conditions. There's also much less room for the occasional electricity "binge": when you're hooked up to the grid, if you happen to need a lot of extra power in a short period of time, you can just take it, and pay for it... if you're off the grid using solar, you can only use as much as your batteries have stored, and after that, you're dependent once again on fossil fuels, or you can just bleed the batteries dry and let your power go out.
The biggest hurdle is perhaps the economics. The costs of alternative energy are astronomical compared to the costs of fossil fuels. There are very few situations, usually underwritten by large companies or subsidized by governments, where alternative energy systems can be afforded, but these subsidies just pass along the very high cost to someone else. The fact remains that you can get more energy per unit of globally-traded currency by burning a petroleum product (oil, gas, coal) than you can get from any alternative source. The alternatives aren't even close, and to make them even remotely comparable, an enormous amount of cost has to be offset by governments, effectively passing on the cost to taxpayers.
I'm as much of a wishful thinker regarding alternative sources of energy as anyone else; I really, REALLY wish that these projects would actually succeed in delivering economical, safe, renewable energy. It absolutely needs to happen for society to move forward and mitigate or prevent a potentially disastrous oil crash. But so far, I think we have
Smog and other particulate matter from Asia will eventually blot out the sun. Enter the new dark age. Watch Blade Runner, and look at the dirt in the sky and acid rain.
Would digital media make real media obsolete? No, it is still charged as real media. Laws accomodate to make sure that the ones that really makes the law keeps their profit, no matter what happens. If they feel threatened there are other ways to action
Renter people need not apply. Renter people will be America's new Irish (Irish need not apply).
We are currently at today's forcasted high temp of 5 deg. F (-21 deg. C) here in the middle of the US, not even taking into effect the 20+ mph wind. I feel sorry for the people trying to use electric heat for homes or businesses on days like today. I wonder how many solar panels I would need at my house today to still have any juice left over to turn on the lights, TV, or a computer.
Make that massively deployed. We need to start thinking about renewable energy sources that will deliver not only just enough energy but fucktons of it (it's a technical term.) Energy to desalinate water for cities, drill tunnels to link the continents with supersonic rail, launch vehicles into space using maglev, scrub the atmosphere, plasma-burn our poisonous waste, air-condition our domed cities, and all those other "big science" ideas that we'd be doing if we weren't waiting for fusion energy to finally work.
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
So by 2030 we'll be powering all the large skyscraper office-towers with just local solar panels? And all those electric vehicles plugging in at the office will get their power from the same solar panels? Even if the entire network is powered by solar panels, there's no way (today) that they can generate enough capacity within city centers to power those areas. They would need to lay panels in less dense areas and transport it to the city center. And since that would still require public infrastructure, the utilities would still be the ones managing it.
Many years ago, ice was very expensive and rare. It was cut from frozen lakes in the north and was shipped all over. Unimaginable now, and not everyone could have ice. Then, refrigeration came along and anyone, anywhere could have virtually unlimited ice for just the price of a machine, the cost of its maintenance, and electricity and water. Being able to preserve food (and medicine) is one of the single biggest contributors to lifespan and overall quantity of life the planet has ever seen. Being able to keep things arbitrarily and efficiently cool is also a key component of many manufacturing processes. Or anything else we currently take for granted -- imagine Google trying to keep their servers cool with harvested ice!
But what if the ice companies of the past were as powerful as the energy companies of today? What if they got laws passed that made creating your own ice just as expensive as the older, horribly inefficient methods, for no reason other than "we're rich and we want to stay that way, but we don't want to have to compete with progress"? Imagine if it was prohibitively expensive to buy a refrigerator, and illegal or expensive to make your own. Where would we, as a society and a planet, be?
(The same argument can be applied to stifling IP laws as well.)
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
absorb and convert sun light
fucking dirty carbonist troll!
Flying cars and personal helicopters have existed sine the 50s.
What prevents regular folks from having them is FAA regs and costs. I would LOVE to have my own Robinson R22 but I can't afford to operate it let alone actually buy one.
Folks commute via helicopter from Greenwich Connecticut into NY City - they're all the 0.01%'ers - but never the less, folks do have personal helicopters.
....
Yes, I'm being pedantic - your point was that there were these great expectations and predictions that never came to pass, but my point is this is a prediction that could very well come to pass as long as the current interests as foiled in their inevitable attempt to stymie progress. We can only hope that we get a battle of billionaires - Musk vs. Utility industry? - to help us little people get a more sustainable transportation structure.
Let's face it, as time goes on, fuel is becoming a larger burden on the typical household in the US.
What about other disruptive technologies extrapolated into the future? With self-driving vehicles, there will be less of a chance that people own their own vehicle and just tap on their smart phone (or whatever they have at that point) for the next available car to pick them up and drop them off where they are going. There should be a law of some kind about future predictions that are of the form "if everything stays the same as today except this one thing then ..." which states that the prediction is invalid.
see you there?
That's ridiculous. I live in Massachusetts, and we have a solar array that generates roughly half our annual electricity needs. If our house were oriented with solar in mind when it was constructed, we could easily generate enough for all our needs and our driving needs.
Granted, that doesn't take into account our use of natural gas for heating, but if we had a geothermal system, it would.
The problem is that solar power is not a factor when houses are designed.
Solar panels need replacing every 10 or 20 years, depending on the type. Batteries need replacing much more frequently. You'll probably still need a back up generator, unless you want your food to go off after a freak hail storm destroys your solar panels.
Until they have electric cars with a 400 mile range and can recharge to 100% to give me 400 miles again within 30 minutes. that is a gigantic hell no.
Well actually there could be a way. The united states would have to invest heavily in light rail that is affordable. I can drive from Michigan to florida for $90. Until I can take a train for $90 for two tickets and load my electric car on it, with it taking a sane amount of time..... It will never happen.
Right now amtrack is as much as an airline flight and it takes 3 DAYS to get there because you have to go from detroit to chicago to Washington DC to North Carolina, to Florida. Oh and to bring your car, $3500 shipping charge and it will arrive 1-2 weeks after you arrive.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
There are two issues, with home solar.
Issue 1. Upfront cost. Solar panels are getting cheaper, however labor rates to install them will only get higher. So it will be a fair investment to get them installed in your home.
Issue 2. Trees. I live in Upstate NY, we have these 30-100 foot tall trees that blocks a lot of the sunlight. We could cut them down... however is it worth it cutting down our best method to reduce carbon in the atmosphere, in order to use less carbon?
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I would blame public schools, but that's too easy a target.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
as people buy electric cars the interest in clean energy will increase because who wouldn't want 'free travel'?
i dont even know where to start, but i'll try. the authors argument is predicated by the tacit agreement that major multibillion dollar energy conglomerates would simply just 'let this all happen.' As more people invest in solar, traditional electric grids will find ways to properly charge their solar users for grid participation. this has already been covered on slashdot.
as gasoline becomes scarce more investment by energy companies will shift to solar and electric, but not because youre somehow now entitled to free transportation and energy at their expense. transit rail systems will allow you to absorb the cost of solar, and although batteries are cheap the model of charging will absolutely take into account any gains that may negate a healthy profit margin at the electric company.
Good people go to bed earlier.
It's almost a prestigious a Hardvard!
I've got a 10^26 Watt fusion reactor I'd like to sell you. cheap.
stupid monkeys...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Obsolete?
No.
But they will become rare in the dense urban centers (aka cities) that 90 percent of America lives in.
The top selling car in the West is a Tesla. The second best selling car is a Prius.
Adapt. Because we're no longer going to subsidize your roads and your parking.
Deal with it.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Once the energy density of the chosen portable storage medium exceeds that of traditional fossil fuels, renewable energy will take off. Nuclear will be around for a very, very long time, especially if we crack fusion.
Your answer is "no".
Always make predictions far enough into the future that you don't have to worry about being proved wrong. Should have said 2100.
No matter where you go, there you are.
You need 300 miles or more and a recharge time of 4 minutes or less for there to be parity between an EV and today's gasoline powered car.
Even if such parity is achieved, there is still no better alternative to utility generation from fossil fuels other than utility generation via nuclear power. Batteries don't generate power, they store it.
So, we see that you don't understand the problem or the question. You probably also fail to see how positively idiotic the question posed by the article is and therefore why it is a troll.
Raioactive man called for help from sidekicks Citizen Solar and Wind Lab. Unfortunately Citizen Solar and Wind Lab are unable to help because it is too cloudy and “people don’t like the noise”
"Married to the Blob" episode
1. One reason oil and coal appear to be cheaper is that the costs of CO2 emissions are completely externalized. Introduce a cap-and-trade system or a CO2 tax and suddenly those won't look quite as economically attractive. (Obviously, you'll have to ignore this point if you think that there are no costs of CO2 emissions, as some do.)
2. Another cost of oil that is mostly externalized and doesn't apply to solar are the military efforts to secure access to oil drilling locations. Again, less oil, less need for military ventures overseas that cost ridiculously large amounts of taxpayer money.
3. The cost per KwH for solar installations has been dropping steadily. That means that the capital investment that oil and gas are competing is going down, the time needed to pay back the investment in electric bill savings is dropping, which means more people will opt for solar panels, regardless of what happens to other markets.
4. There's a libertarian argument to be made here: If you have your own solar power plant that can power your house, then you don't need the heavily regulated utility companies. A power plant that doesn't exist has no government regulatory agency and the staff of bureaucrats that go with it. So by extension, you're reducing your own reliance on the government.
5. Even without addressing points 1 and 2, the cost of accessing oil has been going up over the long-term. That's going to affect demand sooner-or-later and push people towards alternatives.
It's sane, but I don't think it will happen by 2030. There's just too much money to be made in not having widespread solar power that I doubt we'll see a changeover anytime soon. And I'd expect homes to be converted before cars, since we know how to get a solar-powered home that works well, but electric cars have limits that are currently not as easy to adjust to.
I am officially gone from
Doesn't the process of creating the batteries for plug-in electric cars use fossil fuels?
What is this JEW acronym?
All I can find is Jimmy Eat World, Jewelled Emerald Wand and Junior Enlisted Warrior
Nuclear Energy for the LOSERS!
Have you done any calculations on this? It seems wrong. Especially since my boss gets 90% of the energy his house needs with present-day solar panels on just a fraction of the roof.
Wikipedia says solar energy at the earth's surface is 3.5~7KWh/m^2 per day. An average American house uses just over 30KWh per day. Average house roof is 160m^2
Energy needed to drive 40 miles (average American daily driving) = 8kwh (using Chevy Volt)
So let's say your sci-fi roof has 90% efficient solar panels and you live in an area with low sunlight. (3.5*160)*0.9=622.22KWh per day. So unless your house is also an aluminum smelting plant you're very, very wrong.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
D'oh finger slipped, it's 504KWh (point still stands).
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
They can make a dent in the *amount* of energy used, but electric cars will never ever have the range of gasoline powered cars, nor the power. 1 horsepower is 746 watts. The incoming insolation (not insulation but insolation) is the amount of energy hitting the earth from the sun, its usually measured in watts per square metre. The average, when the sun is shining is 1366 watts per square metre. Cloudy skies means less, night means none, winter less than summer, but the average during the day is 1366 watts per square metre. This means 1366/746=1.831 horsepower per square metre. A bare-bones 'gutless' car has 60 horsepower (don't drive in the mountains with this car). 60/1.831=32.7 square meters. 32.7 square meters can be thought of as 8x4.0959 meters. That's about 24x12 feet of panels, and if you want 120 horsepower, thats 24x24 feet of panels. It takes a whole day of charging to charge a car. Nothing left for the house. You can cut back on the amount of energy you use, panels are no replacement for gasoline. The energy density in gasoline is pristine (only nuclear has better energy density).
See Obamacare -> If you start taxing people on the basis of things they're not doing, or for failure to consume those things from a company which charges you ..
If you live under a government, they can tax you any way the gov't sees fit.
Two quick problems:
1. My solar panels on my roof give power to the utility company, not to charge my car. I then suck power from the grid at night from excess capacity of the power grid, who generates this power using -- yes, you know the answer -- oil, gas and coal, along with some hydro. Now it's not all bad -- the power I supply via solar panels reduces the need to build new power plants to support peak needs, but still, they are using oil, gas, coal and hydro to produce my electricity for my car (and house).
2. I can generate a lot more solar power than people farther north and those who live with crappy weather. But I still can't generate it at night when I need it. Almost no one is deploying solar panels and storing the energy locally, so this feature article is a bunch of hooey, as much as I wish it not to be.
I live in the NorthWest. What is this 'solar' you speak of?
And if you're unsure, there's this cool thing called "google" which, when combined with those fancy, dancy new-fangled gadgets called "calculators" can give you the answer in very short order.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Assuming my townhouse has a roof that is optimal to get full coverage from an optimally angled 100% efficient photovoltaic cell that is 16 square meters in size, on a clear day my solar array would produce on December 21st a bit over 10.6 kWh on average. So 254.4 kW per day on the worst day of the year.
The Tesla S uses 85 kW/h. I could drive 3 hours a day, assuming no household use and perfect transference/storage.
Or more realistically, 1 hour a day, and that leaves 269.4 kW for household use. Since the average household in the US of 1500 sq.ft. uses 864 kWh per month, I'd have an excess part way through the third day to "sell" to others.
So even at 50% efficiency, I'd have plenty of power, assuming clear skies, and the worst day of the year to gather every day.
Ditto. I get half my power generated from solar here in Florida (including heating and AC costs) and my panels face East because I don't have a good, big south facing roof to put them on. If my house had been built with solar in mind, I'd be close to 100% off grid. And I could easily double my installation on top of that...
I think the scenario in TFS is 50-100 years away, but I think mass adoption of electric cars is only 10-20 years away. Very soon they'll just make more sense for almost everyone.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
If battery storage becomes cheap, high capacity, low weight, low volume & long lasting then yes, most centralized utilities could become a thing of the past at least in most circumstances. However MAJOR advances will be necessary for that to occur. A combination of renewable energy (solar, wind & geothermal) could easily handle most residential power requirements, the only difficulty is storing that energy.
Gasoline is a fuel.
Batteries store fuel (electricity).
Batteries are roughly comparable to gas tanks, not gasoline.
If for some reason you just want to only compare the fuels, compare gasoline to electricity.
One gram of electricity is more energy than you get from One tonne of gasoline. It's about 9 orders of magnitude better, energy density wise.
It's a completely bogus comparison too, but it at least it is more sensational.
For a fair comparison, compare the weight of everything it takes to make the wheels turn;
The gas, the engine, the cooling system/radiator, tail pipe and muffler, drive train, air filter, and so on, with everything on an electric car.
And how about your mobile usage? How many cars do you have? How much do you use them? How much did you pay for your solar panels and what square footage are they taking up? How much would a 100% viable geothermal system cost you? Are you in a location that is prime for that kind of thing? How much of the nation can use the same methods for geothermal that you're discussing?
You're massively oversimplifying the problems in question and I'm highly skeptical that your orientation of panels is cutting your efficiency by 50%. I'm sure some relatively low cost method would have remedied that and you'd be a fool to bypass that option if it would double the efficiency of your panels.
However, one doesn't need to use solar cells in a vacuum --- add geothermal into the mix, and all one needs is the energy to run a heat pump.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
this article is totally ignorant of the fact that even if you could convert 100% of the sunlight delivered to the roof of your house to electricity you still don't have enough energy to run a household and a car. nevermind the storage issue.
The surface area of just the south facing area of my roof is about 92 square meters. At about 1kw per square meter a 100% efficient panel over this surface area yields 92kWh of energy. Assuming just one hour of perfect sunlight@100% conversion efficiency per day enough energy is produced in just that one hour to account for four days of my average energy usage. Throw in an electric car and it is down to one to two days of running the home and driving around from just one hour of collection at 100% efficiency.
For many parts of the world we are already there in terms of delivering enough energy at sufficient conversion efficiency, area + hours in the day...
What is holding back ditching the grid is not production but rather cost effective and meaningfully dense storage...you figure out how to get a cheap reliable, scalable flow battery working and it changes everything.
I've got geothermal for heating/cooling, AKA a "heat pump" as my HVAC friends call it... Yes, it is powered by electricity from a coal burning power plant. I've fantasized about the day I could get enough solar power from panels to run my geothermal. I have no trees blocking sun onto my home.
Once this solar threshold is crossed to make the ROI "quicker" on roof panels I'm doing it. I just can't wait for 20 years or whatever it is for the payback versus the up front costs. My power bills aren't that high, even with the geothermal.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
The problem with electric cars is the battery: high weight, limited capacity and thus range, hazardous materials which make replacement and disposal a headache. But, electric cars don't really need a battery, they need a source of electric power. Turbine engines run a lot cleaner than piston engines, have better fuel efficiency and run on a much wider variety of fuels, the problem was always stepping down the shaft speed to something a physical driveline could use. It's a lot easier, though, to run a generator at the high RPMs a turbine shaft naturally runs at, and a generator supplies electric power. I get the feeling the next step won't be pure-electric cars, but a hybrid with the conventional piston engine replaced by a small turbine and generator. That would reduce the demand for high-priced fuels, and also reduce the size of battery packs since you'd only need one with a ~20 mile range to cover short hops where it wouldn't be efficient to spin up the turbine.
Turbine start would be easy: any generator is in principle also a motor, and since with no fuel being burned the turbine shaft isn't under load it shouldn't take too much power to spin it up enough to start. I'd imagine this'd make them really popular in northern latitudes where getting cars started in the winter is a bear. A turbine would be easier to start, plus would immediately start providing heat for the interior and defrosting.
Are there any non-hybrid consumer cars with anything close to the miles-per-tank of even the worst fuel economy modern gasoline powered car?
Sometimes I will drive +120 miles (in sub-zero weather, or 100F in the summer) to get to a jobsite, work there for 4 hours, then drive back the same day. I can do this and not need to stop for gas, but with an electric car I'd have to hope that the work site has provisions for charging, assuming the car even has a range of 120 miles with the heater or AC running -- Tesla roadster wouldn't make it.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
If you've own a vehicle already you will still own it tomarrow. But when you replace the vehicle, then you will shop around. Whom ever offers the best deal will get your money. As Fuel Cell vehicles become cheaper then customers will purchase them. And with the U.S. phlanked by the planets two largest Hydrogen supplies; it's only a matter of time.
Aiming for a future where we use less energy than we do now is backwards. I'm not advocating that making existing systems more efficient is a bad thing at all, but to power things that will progress society will require more energy per person consumed than we do now regardless.
Wireless power requires 60% more base power. The often dismissed as impossible flying cars require at least 1.5MW per person. One day it is not far fetched to think we will replace the microwave with a device that can assemble atoms and completely replace farming, which will take serious power. This is what I think even the solar/wind/geothermal people who don't want to move back into caves intuitively understand is the kind of changes that will occur sometime in the future.
Solar panels belong in space. They are much less efficient than hydro-electric, which is about as efficient as coal, which is 6 million times less energy dense than nuclear fission, which is less energy dense than nuclear fusion, which is only 2 orders of magnitude less efficient than antimatter-matter reactions. Spread out to consumers, solar panels also produces a lot of waste that future generations will have to deal with.
The Wright brothers first flight was in 1903.
By WWI aircraft were used extensively.
By WWII air superiority determined the outcome of the war, and the jet engine aircraft was invented.
40 years for those advances...
Your analogy doesn't work.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
this article is totally ignorant of the fact that even if you could convert 100% of the sunlight delivered to the roof of your house to electricity you still don't have enough energy to run a household and a car.
You must have a very small house and use a lot of energy. Apartment buildings will have trouble doing it, but for regular houses it is no problem at all, even with the typical solar cells that people buy today. Canada and Siberia may be exceptions, but at 100% efficiency they should be OK too in most areas. Storage is a problem.
Look at it another way: we can either grow ethanol maize at 1% efficiency sun-to-wheel (with a lot of luck) or build solar cells with 10-20% efficiency. The area problems are immense when you are stuck at 1% efficiency.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Yes, solar power will eventually obsolete all other forms for non-industrial use.
Easily and demonstrably not true unless you invoke as-yet undeveloped technology of uncertain viability. I think solar is terrific and should be used much more but it's not a cure all solution for every energy problem.
For non-transport use, we could really switch to solar-thermal today (not photoelectric cells, but the less efficient black pipe, mirror, and turbine solution). It's simply more expensive than other power sources, and storing power for overnight use is still more expensive so we don't.
No we could not. Even if the technology were adequate (it isn't - we don't have adequate battery technology) the economics of it are prohibitive. When I say cost prohibitive I don't just mean that it is a little more expensive. I mean that given the current state of the technology the cost would be astronomical. There are all sorts of unresolved technical issues and the conversion costs would be outrageous. Little of our transportation infrastructure is set up for electric, gas is widely used for heating, you have to allocate space for the power generation. Not to mention that generation in the rather cloudier and snow prone regions can be problematic.
Since all that's required is ordinary technological process, the change to electric cars will inevitably happen, but over the course of several decades.
What about airplanes? There is no reasonably feasible flight technology that is not based on fossil fuels.
From what I've seen, the Tesla uses a LOT of electric power to charge. If you drive it during the day you won't be charging it at your home solar installation.
If I need to recoup 60 miles of range per night, I need 20kWh of power at night. Assuming perfect storage efficiency, I need something like 135 square meters of solar just to keep a minimal driving distance on my car. None of this says anything about my actual power consumption in my home, which might double my total solar area or larger once you factor in inefficiencies. At this point, I've already tripled the square footage of my actual roof space and am starting to approach something like half of my entire lot size.
I also live in Minnesota, so I could probably increase all this by a third to account for the lack of sunlight in the winter.
I think it will take a factor of 10 improvement in batteries and solar panel efficiencies to make any of this possible.
When Solar Panel will cost less than $5k for the whole installation on your home and electric cars cost the same or less than conventional cars.
For now it seems to be mostly the ones who make like $200k yearly who can afford both, without taking a massive loan for the next 50 years.
I don't know any engineer who believes that electric vehicles are a serious option, unless there is a stunning revolution in energy storage technology.
If there is, however, electric motors do offer some very nice characteristics, offering excellent torque, and eliminating the need for complex, heavy, and expensive gearing.
Solar has a part, perhaps in household installations, but you still need to be able to provide base load, because most people have to deal with something called darkness, which is caused by the rotation of the large elongated sphere, on which most people live. These installations do not produce huge amounts of power, but have been reasonably successful, in large scale deployment, in places like Germany. There is some credibility in the idea that they can provide distributed generation of energy, on a limited scale. However, solar installations are unattractive, expensive, consume rare earth metals, need complex and expensive inverters, and have a relatively long return on investment period - often equalling the lifespan of at least some of the key components.
I'd be interested in seeing the evidence for the estimation of material costs, used to generate the quoted statistics. I'd consider them dubious.
Perhaps the author of this article is from a different planet, maybe one inhabited by religious nuts, where their planet is still orbiting their energy providing star, and they don't have any periods of darkness; where some magic creature created everything fully grown, with no design iteration, and everyone was descended from the people that weren't wiped out by this evil monster, in a crazed act of mass genocide, followed by being subjected to a huge in-breeding experiment, to re-populate the planet. I have heard that places still exist - usually in countries where people still believe in gods, trolls, jesuses, witches, mohammuds, fairies, and trolls. In the real world, however, such delusions only provoke derision and mockery. Anyway, a step change in technology won't kill the 'old' vehicle producers. They have massive resources, and at least in Europe, have invested heavily in new technologies. They also have massive research budgets. A small startup is unlikely to wipe the floor with the traditional providers, unless they make some breakthrough in light weight, compact, extremely high energy density storage technology.
High-density ultracapacitors also have their own issues with lifespan. I see shelf-life figures of 3-4 years, service life of 10 years at cool temps (25 C), degrading to 1500 hours at 65 C. In a possibly hot, possibly even self-heating regime like automotive operation, I'm not sure they would last as long as even today's batteries.
When comparing batteries to capacitors, it's tempting to think of an ideal capacitor -- no internal resistance, unlimited charge/discharge rate and cycles, unlimited shelf life. Real ultracapacitors are still far from that ideal.
I have an electric car, and solar panels. The answer is still no. My electric car is so efficient that it's not the largest component of my electric bill. I have gas cooking, heating, and hot water; and the electric bill is three times the car bill, in December. In the hot summers, the AC can kick the daylights out of the Tesla in terms of power consumption. By the way, electric car travel is NOT FREE. There is significant capital expense, just another way of financing energy usage. My solar panels spread this capital cost over their usage period (I pay an "electric bill" for the solar power I use). It's all just a financing shell game. You can make one number $0, but you can't make them all $0. As folks have said, they want to charge my electric car a "gas tax" to pay for the roads. They even want it to make noise, so kids and folks don't walk in front of it. None of this transportation power shuffling does anything about industrial power consumption. You're not going to like the price of aluminum foil made with solar electricity. High power industries need the high power density low cost power that renewables can't provide.
What are you supposed to do at night? if the unfairly pro solar regulatory scheme continues, utilities will be going broke soon. Power banking schemes provide the 100% efficient storage for free. If solar panel owners had to maintain their own storage systems, the economics would change drastically.
One simple deal for them is to allow keystone pipeline through. However, do it as part of a compromise. Tax the oil that flows through at a $1/bl, and use that as a subsidy for the next 10 years to get our small to medium size vehicles moved to electric and large vehicles moved to Nat. Gas. esp. as a Serial Hybrid
.25/gal /year, and add $.01/KWH for electric vehicles charged in the daytime. The gas and electric tax would then go to the state, while the diesel tax should go to the feds. And the feds should invest a bit of that money into hyperloop.
At the same time, increase taxes on gas/diesel vehicles by
By doing this, it encourages this change faster.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Okay, compare a contemporary battery -- say, the battery system of a Nissan Leaf -- to a fuel tank that weighs 200kg, but holds only 4 liters of fuel, and can only accept fuel at 120 ml/minute. That's if you can find a "fast pump"; the "standard pump" you have at home can only feed it about 15 ml/minute.
I do expect battery technology to improve, and I do expect it to displace fossil fuel -- in decades, not years or centuries. My initial comment contradicts neither this expectation nor the points in the article.
When I can put 500-600 KM of range in my car in about 5 minutes like with gasoline.
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
The car rental companies should be jumping at the chance of getting a decent subscription based revenue model. Main problem with electric cars is, occasionally you need a gas car with greater range. If the car rental companies sell a subscription model [*] more people would buy electric cars. The electric car makers and dealers might give you one or two years free subscription to entice buyers. People who have decent public transport but still are forced to keep a car around also might find this subscription model appealing.
[*] My idea of a subcription model: something like 50$ a month gets you two days and 200 miles, unused miles and days will accrue in your account, once you reach the maximum accrual subscribers pay a small annual fee to keep the account current, car rentals will provide electric car recharging stations, use a web app to schedule pick up of gas cars
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I'm always stunned and amazed at what so-called academic professionals will write about the near future. This one is 'predicting' that there will be mostly electric cars in , what, 16 years and that gasoline engine service stations are going to obsolete and gone by that time?. He actually gets paid for this?
Girlfriend, in 16 years the only thing that is really likely to change is the color of the table counter-tops at the local Burger King and the name on the alcohol/caffeine combo drink sold at the Arco Mini-mart. Plus the annoying junk-mail and stuff that you are throwing away now is going worth a lot of money to retarded collectors of 2010-era nostalgia that have too much money.
These guys are almost as dumb as the Hollywood types that do CGI graphics of cities 20-years in the future that look like cities may be in 1000 years if techno development continues at the same pace that it has in the past 100 years. Like the 2010 city in 1983's Blade Runner.
Costs...decrease? In today's profiteering America? Ha! Unlikely.
I certainly understand the thermodynamic tragedy of the internal-combustion power train. It's a crying shame to burn petroleum derivatives, at 15% efficiency if we're lucky, instead of saving them for chemical feedstocks.
But until electric cars offer adequate range on a single charge, even with the heater or A/C operating, and until we have either ubiquitous quick-charge stations or ubiquitous charge-where-you're-parked (or both), they aren't going to render the IC vehicle obsolete. Again, this does not contradict the linked article.
Flywheels suspended in magnetic bearings spinning in vacuum have great duty cycle, fast charge/discharge times and very good efficiency. They interface beautifully with a motor/generator for charging and discharging. No chemicals or strange materials. Their main disadvantage is the angular momentum makes putting it in a car a little difficult. They can pack batteries in twin-packs with opposite spin to cancel the angular momentum. But greater danger is accidents. The containment is very poor. The heavy flywheel spinning at some 400,000 rpm delicately balanced in magnetic bearings would literally, yes literally not figuratively, explode in an accident. But for home use, you can bury it underground below some six inches of concrete. This can act as a super large capacitor to store the solar energy of night use and for cloudy days. UT Austin demonstrated a 50 Kwh storage unit.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
the big hype was telecommuting. If only the guys at Cisco did their jobs right we'd all be able to work from home. That was 20 years ago.
Recently, Yahoo put an end to their telecommuting experiment. Many companies never allowed ANY telecommuting.
So now I'm supposed to believe that I'll be driving around in a solar powered/charged electric car thanks to the brain power of silicon valley? Will that arrive before or after my helicopter back-pack?
A residential ground source heat pump costs about 20-30 thousand on average, high initial install, to be sure, but offset by far lower operating costs.
And the lifetime of a GSHP can be decades.
I would say the viability is near universal across the country, barring people who live on bare rock or the like.
The ice industry never got that kind of power, but the salt industry did.
Even if solar were made super efficient (AND affordable) today it would still be nowhere near ready that quickly. I'm not convinced it will even start moving in that direction that quickly, let alone arrive.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
In August, I put a 7.685 kW solar system on my small townhouse. The solar cells produce 10-40 kWh per day, depending on weather. In November, I purchased a 2013 Nissan Leaf. The Leaf can go 3-4 miles per kWh of electricity.
Combining both my house and car's electrical usage together only amounts to around 20-30 kWh per day, leaving my electric bill decisively negative for the last 5 months. I'd expect an even greater difference during the summer months.
Many ships today use electric motors already. They just use diesel generators to put out the electricity needed. Trains are already operated in such fashion and have been for a few years already. If we gave trains battery cars they would be able to capture the energy they make when going down hill instead of burning it off. If we managed to find a way to replace gas tanks on trains with batteries and put panels on the cars to provide extra power we could reduce train travel costs by as much as 20-40 percent. That's a Buffet investment indeed.
The kind of status-quo-maintaining garbage you are spouting is nothing short of deliberate evil, given what a careful read of the relevant scientific literature would tell you. If we check back in 2025 and find the warming continuing, do you give us permission to banish you to the island of Vanuatu, where you can sink or swim on the strength of your convictions?
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
you mean like.... SAND?
In Texas all new highways will be privatized toll roads thanks to crony capitalism. Never mind that roads are natural monopolies the Republican lead Texas state legislature thinks it is a wonderful idea to confiscate private land and lease it corporations for 50-100 years who will then charge commuters per mile royalties with guaranteed profits backed by the government. In metropolitan areas the toll rolls will fluctuate based on traffic conditions. Near free energy for transportation would be wonderful but at least in Texas toll trolls will be there to extort their margins.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be-T J
Computer-control would probably be necessary in non-rural areas to provide sufficient safety.
As far as the cost, being stuck in traffic is also cost. One is stuck in 2D gridlock, looks up and sees all that empty unused space above them and thinks, "why the hell can't we use that space instead of being stuck here?"
Remember, time is money. If the daily cost of a personal flyer is less than the daily cost of time of sitting in 2D traffic, then it's worth it to the individual.
We just need sufficient investment in infrastructure and economies of scale to get it kick-started. (Nash Equilibrium?)
Table-ized A.I.
"In 2012, National Science Board member James Lawrence Powell investigated peer-reviewed literature published about climate change and found that out of 13,950 articles, 13,926 supported the reality of global warming. Despite a lot of sound and fury from the denial machine, deniers have not really been able to come up with a coherent argument against a consensus."
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad...
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
We only have panels on a small part of our roof, because, as I pointed out, our house wasn't designed with solar in mind. Likewise, putting in a geothermal system would be much cheaper when done with new construction.
I did point out that I'm in Massachusetts, which is not a prime solar location. I just wish we could keep Daylight Savings Time year round so that we could generate more power. :)
I'm not saying that it's practical or cost effective now. I am saying that it is practical and cost effective when put in with new construction and financed as part of a 30-year mortgage. On average, the increase in mortgage payment is more than offset by the reduction in utility bills.
We only have panels on a small part of our roof, because, as I pointed out, our house wasn't designed with solar in mind.
Ok. thanks for not answering a slew of questions only furthering my doubts that you're telling any type of truth.
Likewise, putting in a geothermal system would be much cheaper when done with new construction.
Maybe where you live. If the other AC is right and it's in the area of 20-30k then the cost of this system would be around a quarter of the total construction costs for the average home.
I did point out that I'm in Massachusetts, which is not a prime solar location.
Either your obtuse or you're skirting the question. I was talking about geothermal heating. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and say you're just straight up refusing to answer in a meaningful way since I doubt you know the answer to the question anyway and since you answered nothing else with a meaningful answer.
On average, the increase in mortgage payment is more than offset by the reduction in utility bills.
Not on your average 30 year mortgage you wouldn't. I'm going to use some base numbers since you refuse to answer any of my questions with numbers. I'm guessing the systems you're talking about between solar and geothermal would run the average home owner about 50 thousand. Over the terms of your traditional 30 year mortgage that comes out to about 120k total when considering interest. That's 330+ USD per month just for the hardware without any question of maintenance. While heating bills can certainly get high for a fair percentage of the population that traditionally only last a couple months. I'd say your average cost for gas and electricity for the average home owner is about 200 a month and they don't have to maintain the infrastructure behind it.
Actually, the analogy works just fine.
Pedantry aside, electric vehicles currently cannot (and I repeat, CANNOT) fullfill all the roles occupied by petroleum ICE vehicles.
The technology is currently in its very early infancy, and there's no realistic infrastructure to support a full-scale migration.
In the last 100 years, petroleum ICE vehicles have gone from a clunky, unreliable rich man's toy to a staple of everyday life and business in this country.
While the electric vehicle doesn't have to go through many of the same engineering hurdles that their ICE counterparts have gone through in that century, they have their own logistical problems. And at the current rate of advancement, we're still decades away from the sort of ubiquity and utility currently enjoyed by ICE vehicles.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
According to this map, I estimate you would have to double the size of a Minnesota installation as compared to the southwest. And you have to deal with panels getting covered in snow.
http://www.applied-solar.info/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/world_solar_insolation_map.gif
Additionally, I've not even addressed the idiocy of the notion that electric vehicles will make power utilities obsolete until now.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
this article is a perfect example
Your math is WAY off. A 250W solar panel with an area of 1.4 m^2 (Typical Sanyo product) will generate 1 KWH per day with 4 hours of sun exposure. Need 20 kWH, that's 20 * 1.4 or 28 m^2. Not the 135 you claimed. And that's with only 4 hours per day of noon sun exposure equivalent. The average where I live is 6 hours.
If you start taxing people on the basis of things they're not doing
That's the exact logic Chief Justice John Roberts used to rule that Obamacare was constitutional: he said that not buying health insurance is a taxable activity, and the courts can't interfere with Congress' power to tax.
The tax that's assessed if you choose not to buy health insurance will be collected by the IRS. Before the issue went to the Supreme Court, the president insisted this was a fine, not a tax, telling George Stephanopoulus, "I absolutely reject the notion" that it's a tax. But when its constitutionality depended on it being a tax, he suddenly no longer objected to calling it a tax. And then a few short months after the Supreme Court decision, the sheeple forgot what its constitutionality depended on, and the White House reverted to calling it a "fine" again.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
When enough people own electric cars & solar panels, then the price of gas & grid electric will drop, which will disincentivize people from investing in new tech.
>Okay, compare a contemporary battery...
No, that's precisely my point - don't compare a tiny subsystem of the car and pretend that's the whole problem.
It's not just the fuel, or the fuel plus the fuel tank.
It's the fuel, the tank, the engine, the wheels, the cooling system, the exhaust system - basically everything.
When Lockheed Martin finishes their small fusion engine in a few years, the game will be over.
Industry uses enormous amounts of electricity. You're not going to have your fancy electric cars and solar panels without the factories to process the ore, manufacture the chemicals, fabricate the raw component parts and assemble the product. United States electrical energy usage for aluminum production alone is 45,700 GWh per annum (U.S. Energy Requirements for Aluminum Production, U.S. DOE, 2007). There will continue to be demand for an electric utility.
... and you will get much more miles out of every kWh of juice
The Tesla model S has a base battery capacity of 60kWh for a 208 mile range, or 3.46 miles/kWh
What is the current weight of a Tesla car ? More than one metric ton ?
If the weight can be cut down, let's say, by 50%, it'll be more than 500KG less of mass to haul, which translate to more miles per kWh.
What is the total weight of the batteries in the Tesla vehicle ? If someone can improve on either the capacity of the batteries and/or reducing the weight of the batteries, that will boost the efficiency of the Tesla vehicle even more.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
My car adds about $20/mo to my electric bill, or 10%. They're not much of an issue if you can already power your house.
Not on your average 30 year mortgage you wouldn't. I'm going to use some base numbers since you refuse to answer any of my questions with numbers. I'm guessing the systems you're talking about between solar and geothermal would run the average home owner about 50 thousand. Over the terms of your traditional 30 year mortgage that comes out to about 120k total when considering interest. That's 330+ USD per month just for the hardware without any question of maintenance. While heating bills can certainly get high for a fair percentage of the population that traditionally only last a couple months. I'd say your average cost for gas and electricity for the average home owner is about 200 a month and they don't have to maintain the infrastructure behind it.
1800 a year in 2005 according to the DOE.
http://www.project.org/info.php?recordID=341
And your claims of the mortgage increase are off by a factor of ten compared to what other people are using.
http://geology.com/energy/selecting-a-geothermal-heat-pump/
http://energy.gov/energysaver/articles/choosing-and-installing-geothermal-heat-pumps
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_heat_pump
Sorry, but apparently there's a big discontinuity between what you think the costs will be and what other sources say.
There are lots of folks that do not own homes. They will make an economic decision to buy the most affordable transportation that covers their needs. So there are more sides to this question, and certainly given the technology there are people that will become more or less independent. But others will no doubt find that gas is their least cost option and will go that way.
I don't have solar but a couple of hours ago I was reviewing my electricity usage. I have two meters on my house, one for my car (Tesla model S) and the other for my house. Now I have a couple computers running full-time and an electric stove, gas hot water, dryer and heat and my home electrical usage is significantly more than my car, and I'm doing over 1000 miles per month and I'm not the super efficient driver (the Tesla acceleration is addictive and it's too easy to exceed speed limits). During the summer months when the AC kicks in my home electricity usage is well over double what my car uses. All of my appliances are very energy efficient (except my old stove) and all of my lighting is LED or fluorescent.
Even with the high California rates through PG&E I'm averaging around $46/month for powering my car using the EV rate. If I could get a 7 KW solar setup it would mostly offset all of my electricity usage. The problem is that I have to replace my roof in order to install solar and I have a lot of trees that shade things.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
But hell no!
Electric cars will never be more efficient, when you add up all of the inputs, than gasoline.
Today they're a novelty, where rich people show off their "environmentalism" which only they can afford, via massive tax subsidy from the rest of us.
But scale everything up, and we'll have electrical grid and generation issues (solar charging ain't gonna do it, and last I checked, lunar cells don't do much), as well as huge toxic waste and chemical sourcing problems. Hint: where was the largest lithium mine recently discovered?
The electric car nonsense is just a (ahem) power trip for folks who want to tell us how to live, and profit from doing so.
Some day, if we come up a better energy storage medium than batteries, we might see a rational shift from gasoline.
Not until then.
The answer is NO.
Two things electric cars need to have to become viable alternatives to petroleum-fueled cars: 1) the vehicle must have a range of at least 600 km (373 miles) and 2) the vehicle can recharge quickly from a commercial DC charger in under 15 minutes. I think that could be possible as early as 2020 when improved battery designs are available.
Please get the name of the university correct.
For future reference:
The maximum theoretically possible conversion efficiency for sunlight is 86% due to the entropy of the photons emitted by the sun's surface.
From a paper published in Applied Physics.
Your sci-fi roof tops out at 86%, not 90%. :)
Figure out how much energy your car uses, then the area of solar panels needed to provide that energy. Then add on the need to use the car during the short cold days of winter.
And you can't use the solar panels to charge the car at night, unless you have another set of batteries to store the energy made by the panels during the day while the car is not there.
You will still be using grid power. Or some liquid or gaseous fuel. With luck you will use less of it than now.
The utility will probably just charge you a fixed connection fee to be on the grid so they get maintenance money regardless of how much power you use. My electric bill is already set up that way. I pay 41 cents a day for that connection fee, and the actual kw-h charge is above that.
Gasoline and Electricity from Coal burning have made the centuries old Wind Power, Solar Power and already the new-fangled led-acid hybrid battery powered "Electric Car" obsolete!
E. Musk is loosing billions per hour and that is damn good for Americans (North, Central and South).
The sun rises. And we will have 6 minutes with about 45 seconds more of daylight for our length-of-day. How about that!
}:-D
I do not understand how the community on *slashdot* can sound like such a bunch of cranky 90 year old men. Paraphrasing: Ah, those electric cars will never work and if they do they'll just tax us for it... Yah, I'd never want free clean energy and the car of the future if it means I'd still have to pay for roads and schools somehow... That would be horrible.
A few data points:
1) Today you can buy solar systems for your house for a couple of dollars per watt and in some places (e.g. Missouri) we get rebates from our utility that almost cover the cost of putting them on your roof.
2) My electric vehicle averages about 10kWh of energy per day for 30 miles of travel. Even a small solar installation could produce that.
the answer is usually no. So umm no.
Some idiot says: "Infinite because I don't hours to wait while the damn thing recharges."
I've had my Tesla for 6 months and I haven't "waited" for it to charge once. My car has a "full tank" pretty much every time I leave the house. But I bet you've "waited" at a gas station for at least a couple of hours total during that time period... and probably an oil change too.
When you have an electric car it is always "filling up" when it's in your garage. The only reason I'd ever have to wait is if I drove more than 200 miles in a day without stopping...
So do most people leave their electric cars at home when their solar panels are generating electricity? No? Well then they need the power grid to soak up the electricity their solar panels generate during the day, and then they can recharge their electric car batteries at night off the power grid.
In effect, the power grid becomes a sort of storage battery for their "free" electricity.
If I drive my plug-in electric car, say, 50 miles a day, how big a solar array will I need to generate enough power to recharge my car at night? Probably pretty a pretty big one.
I wonder, how many rooftop solar arrays make economic sense without taxpayer subsidies?
Ken
There are no batteries that store the same amount of energy in the same weight and the same volume as gasoline; the point jeffb was making. Your post was non-responsive to this point.
In fact, batteries are only a storage mechanism (equivalent to a gas TANK) and NOT an energy source. Gasoline is actually an energy source. The coal that's burned (in order to travel at a loss across the grid to your (lossy) car charger and its (lossy) battery) is the actual energy source for that electric car. And while you can theoretically use (tens of thousands of dollars of) solar panels (in some areas) to re-charge your car at home during daylight (when you are probably away at work), most users of electric cars will be charging at night (when they can let their car sit there for many hours charging ) from the (heavily coal-powered) grid. Unfortuantely, those solar panels also slowly degrade providing fewer kWh of energy per year (and longer car-charge times) until you have to replace them (another huge pile of cash) ...something gas does not do. The article says the Tesla battery is about 1K lbs (imagine a car with a 1K lbs gas tank!) and says the Volvo body panel batteries will be 15% lighter... that's still a joke when compared to ANY fossil fuel.
Looks like you can get 20.4% panels on the market: http://us.sunpower.com/cs/Satellite?blobcol=urldata&blobheadername1=Content-Type&blobheadername2=Content-Disposition&blobheadervalue1=application%2Fpdf&blobheadervalue2=inline%3B+filename%3Dsp_E20_327_320_ds_en_ltr_MC4Comp_504860B.pdf&blobkey=id&blobtable=MungoBlobs&blobwhere=1300286769491&ssbinary=true
So 3.5 * 160 * 0.204 = 114.24 KWh per day, not counting waste getting it to and from the battery and your direct power drains.
Newer technologies move from the arena of "interesting trinkets" and magazine concept art covers to dominance in the market ONLY when they overtake the older tech. The car did not have to go 300 miles on a tank of gas at 65mph with GPS, satellite radio, and air conditoning in order to become dominant.... BUT it did have to become at least as fast as a horse, at least as comfortable as a horse, as reliable as a horse, and at least as capable as a horse to become viable. By exceeding the horse in any of these ways, the car won. The car did NOT win by getting government subsidies. The car did NOT win by having its supporters forecasting that someday it would be "really cool" so people should pay too much to buy a sucky version of one now, as a "statement".
The car is a good example of this, but it actually applies to all tech. It's a bit like the old joke where a guy says to his buddy "you can't out-run that bear!" and the other guys replies "I don't have to - I just have to run faster than you". New tech does not have to be a perfect solution, but it DOES have to be a better solution - otherwise inertia keeps the old tech in place.
Any huge space-based solar power station is a James-Bond-villain-style wepon system on par with "sharks with frikkin lasers". If the system can gather a huge amount of solar power and focus it on a precisely-tracked spot on the surface of the rotating Earth (where a receiver station would be built) then it would, by definition, also be able to fry anything (probably using microwaves, as most of these proposals include for the downlink) on the surface that its operators decided to target...
semiconductors and solar panels are NOT made from cheap-and-plentiful beach sand scooped up by a frontloader and dumped into a big pentium-making machine at Intel or panel-making machine at Solyndra.
Your statement is about like saying that the space shuttles flew on Hydrogen and Oxygen (some of the most-common elements in the universe) therefore flying space shuttles should be nearly free.
Solar energy reaches the surface of the Earth at too low of an energy density (not enough photons per square meter) to ever be practical as a competitor to fossil fuel, even at 100% efficiency (which NO solar-power collection/conversion system can even approach). The ONLY reason solar SEEMS competative right now in some markets and applications is that government is putting its finger on the scale (artificially inflating the price of power that competes with solar). This sort of government scam (in this case: of forcing inefficiencies into the economy to distort markets for political purposes) will ALWAYS lead to negative and often unpredictable side-effects
NO, the energy density of Gasoline is way higher than anything remotely close to being on the market. you just can't beat it right now.
I've done quite a bit of prelim research figuring out what I'd do for an off grid house and the biggest problem I find currently is the inability for me to change electric car batteries myself. They have expensive robots in the works for the cars but they lack standards and I don't need a robot, some tools to pull the battery and swap it are all I'd need - and it can be expensive, that isn't really the issue.
The smart thing would be to charge the car battery during the day while you are at work; then swap batteries. Sure an extra battery will cost $10k (sooner than you think and obviously I'm not thinking of Tesla's massive one) but to connect a new house to the grid around here costs about $10k. The grid and the monopoly are not setup for a fair deal as far as putting power back into the grid. May as well put that grid tie into your own solution. (and don't forget about connection fees and the possibility you'll be charged future ones as they get threatened by solar.)
It gets costly and quite wasteful to lose all that energy storing it into poor quality (but cheap) batteries that even at their best lose MOST the energy only to hold it until the car can then chuck a % of it recharging. You can make an array large enough to charge the car during the day and it can fit on a roof; however, when you start including % losses in the storage process it gets unrealistic. Sure you can find new expensive storage methods-- but the reality is most that power needs to go into the car and the car is not around during the day - the least wasteful thing is a personal battery swap - and that is not unrealistic... but we are not even given the option of buying such a thing at this time (plus the battery's charge electronics are likely not in the battery so add some more cost.)
I've never thought that I must perfectly replace the current lifestyle; some changes are expected. Too many wimps who can't be inconvenienced even slightly are what keep progress from happening. So what if a car recharge takes an hour; I can waste an hour going out to eat, shop, etc. Shopping malls should be jumping at infrastructure to charge all these cars... slowly. Tesla is genius if they own enough land to setup coffee shops at their charging stations, it'll more than pay for the free electricity.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
"1. One reason oil and coal appear to be cheaper is that the costs of CO2 emissions are completely externalized."
Nope. You must learn to play fair. If you are going to assert that oil and coal must account for any side effects you choose to percieve as negative (by having a penalty attached that you deem appropriate) then your opponents get to do the same to your choices. YOU (as a human with left-wing political views) might want to say CO2 emissions are "bad" and assess a price for them, but vegitation needs and likes CO2. On the other hand, you are not accounting for the impact of the mining and manufacturing required for solar panels, nor the disposal costs (those things wear-out QUICKLY. I run my home on them. They produce less and less with each passing year and will be nearly useless at 20 years) The CO2 that billows from my car, on the other hand, is "inhaled" by plants which strip-off and keep the carbon atoms and then "exhale" nice clean Oxygen molecules.
"2. Another cost of oil that is mostly externalized and doesn't apply to solar are the military efforts to secure access"
Which the U.S. will have to pay as long as ANY of our friends (whom we have treaty obligations to) or trading partners (to whom our economy is tied) still use oil. In fact, even if we all get off of oil as an energy source, we will all still need it for literally thousands of other critical applications - so these costs are there even if we go 100% nuke or solar or wind etc. In a world with NO OIL AT ALL, we would STILL have these costs, because SOME OTHER RESOURCE would be rare enough and important enough to require it. You'll figure this out when you grow up and read enough history - The world was full of wars long before man found a use for oil
"3. The cost per KwH for solar installations has been dropping steadily."
Poor understanding of economics. All new tech starts-out exotic and expensive but then (if it becomes popular) the price comes down as a result of high-quantity manufacturing. This is happening right now with solar because it crossed the threshold needed to cause large modern automated factories to become practical... but this is a one-time slope from (artificially expensive because it's new and rare and hand-built) so some plateau which is the realistic price. We're probably near theat plateau now or may have even dipped below it due to temporary over-production. Solar panels are physical objects that have some minimum cost to manufacture. The downward slope you've seen will necessarily level-off as it did with cars, airplanes, houses, refrigerators, etc.
Credit where credit is due: your point #4 is both valid and true
Your point #5 is irelevent; The cost to access fossil fuels only matters in this discussion if it rises far enough to make fossil fuel more expensive than the alternatives. We are no where NEAR that point now nor will we be in the next 500 years. Even now, what most people do not notice is that the government makes more money per gallon of gas (through taxes) than "big oil" makes from that same gallon.... so fossil fuel today is already being made artificially expensive by government manipulation more than by extraction costs. If prices for fossil fuels rise too high, the public can simply demand tax cuts rather than the hassle of a shift to something else. Supporters of electric cars will get to demanding lower taxes sooner or later anyway because lawmakers all around the U.S. are already scheming to slap new taxes on electric cars (to make up for the "lost opportunity dollars" they are not getting from gas taxes not paid by those cars). I doubt there will be ANY economic benefit to (owners of) electric cars ten years from now (by which time, electric cars will probably be paying per-mile taxes and possibly increased registration fees). If you want to avoid that future, you have to get on the smaller, cheaper government bandwagon.
Flywheels, as efficient energy storage in cars, are discussed endlessly like many of the interesting gadgets of the late Mr Tesla.... but like his gadgets, they look better on paper and in a daydream than in the real world, so they never arrive as practical products. For the flywheel to be useful in this application, it needs to have a lot of mass (which the car must then transport everywhere it goes) and be properly isolated from all the bumps and jolts of typical driving. Getting its friction down low enough for the required efficiency (and KEEPING it that efficient for the life of the car) while doing those things is not practical. Unlike most people, I commend you for being smart enough to be aware of the safety problems that would attend a flywheel of sufficient performance. For the forseeable future, some super-battery or (better yet) super-capacitor is a superior temporary energy store between something like a gas turbine generator and an electric drive train.
"So let's say your sci-fi roof has 90% efficient solar panels"
Really? This exceeds theoretical limits of quantum efficiency....
Thermal, yeah, you could get a Carnot efficiency up there....but it would be so hot that we're talking about plasma... LOL
Yes. Yes it will. The method by which is described in the fine article. Your asserion, however, is based merely on a wilful misapplication of a "law" that you have very little clue as to what it means or where it applies, thinking that it means "MUST be answered with 'no'". This is not the case.
Isn't it about 3000 miles per litre? That's a 1m2 panel under normal daylight for 1 hour to take you 800 miles...
Impossible? DEFINITELY NOT.
The main problem with purely electric vehicles is long recharge times, low battery energy density and lack of backward compatibility with current infrastructure. Plug in flex fuel hybrids seem like the way to go. The best option seems to be a Brayton cycle turbo-electric drive-train with a battery backup. The advantages of having the US car and truck fleet switch to this include: - It has a backward compatibility with current infrastructure. - Power to weight ratio of the drive-train is comparable to conventional cars. - Regenerative braking allows for better efficiency. - Brayton cycle engines run on just about any liquid or gaseous fuel without modification. This allows an easy transition to alternative fuels. - It is an established technology that is used on excavation dump trucks and locomotives. - There is an advantage over purely eclectic vehicles. Apartment dwellers who cannot run an extension cord to there car can still use it. It can still be used for long trips. - Regenerative breaking reduces fuel consumption - The drive-train has fewer moving parts and is much more reliable. Cars with a disabled turbine can still function as purely electric vehicles. - The turbine and battery pack can be made to be easily removable and upgradeable. - It increases elasticity in oil demand thereby reducing oil price spikes.
First the good about solar:
Solar panels payoff in less than 5 years with current prices, and this should drop to 3 years by 2020.
So if you need to fully replace the panels every 20 years its still a great bargain.
Wait, after 20 yrs, solar panels are still producing electricity, even if they're at 40% original capacity. Instead you might opt to add 50%-100% more panels, and keep using the old ones as well. The only reason it might make sense replacing is we can assume the latest panels are cheaper and more efficient, perhaps 300% better performance than your vintage panels, at some point producing 400% of our electricity needs in the summer solstice (so that can still break even in the shortest day in the year), store that in batteries. But heating our houses with solar in the winter... That's unlikely.
Now the bad:
Some people live in apartments, can't have their own solar panels. Some people don't have a roof with a good view of the sun. Some people are forbidden from installing solar panels due to stupid community agreements. Even if you cover 100% of NYC metro area with the latest panels, it might not even produce all daylight electricity requirements in the best summer day (and fall way short in nov/dec/jan). But how are you going to heat those houses in the winter, even if they get the best weather proofing money can buy.
Maybe one day we'll have 70% efficient solar panels. Even 50% efficiency isn't expected.
But no, the concept of the electricity grid dying 100% isn't going to happen. At least not by 2030. Not even 2040.
Baseload electricity will be needed. Large hydro dams are very cheap electricity.
In less than 10 years we'll have LFTR (Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors) that produce electricity at less than half the install costs of new uranium/water nukes, generating 1% the nuclear waste per GWh generated, with fuel that is essentially free (search thorium problem monazite sands, spoiler alert, we need a use for the thorium that comes with the sands). All with walkaway safety reliability (no humans or computers needed to shutdown the plant in case of a serious accident, the plant shuts it self down with simple melting of the freeze plug upon loosing electricity).
The problem with nuclear isn't safety, it's cost. Cost is high because the nuclear powers completely neglected developing the safest, most efficient nuclear power plant, molten salt cooled using Thorium fuel. Because it doesn't produce plutonium or U-235 for bombs. The Uranium/Water cooled plants were more of a let's leverage all this money already spent on military nuclear needs and help the civilian side, this has been known since the 60s. Light water nuclear reactors are for subs, aircraft carriers and large ships, but the pentagon notorious cost inefficiency allowed those reactors to get so expensive they can't afford them in destroyers and cruisers.
The safety problem with nuclear is a huge awareness challenge. Nobody died from Fukushima radiation, nobody died from three mile island, Chernobyl did killed less than 100 people (it was said one million would die right after the accident happened). The problem is summed by a very wise saying from a very cheesy movie:
"Agent K: A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it."
We need to approach nuclear energy just like we approach fire. We're always told not to play with fire. We're educated to respect it. The same needs to happen with Nuclear, but right now we need to show people radiation is 1/1000th of the problem green peace wants us to believe.
But unlike fire, radiation is everywhere. If you live in Denver-CO or fly for the airlines, you're subject to tens of times more radiation than a nuclear worker that gets the closest to an operating nuclear reactor.
Part of the obscene cost of nuclear reactors is the extreme view that the NRC (and related agencies in other countries) take to nuclear power plant generated radiation. Far more radiation is put in the environment by a coal power plant in a
Are those enough NOs? :)
The oil companies will kill that...perhaps literally. They have the world's greatest standing army at their disposal. Big Oil will just yank their Congressional leashes and the U.S. Military will pounce on whatever Oily needs to protect its profit margin.
Seriously, might want to check little things like that when posting.
A bunch of my friends are profs there.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Is all you think about a) your home, and b) your car?
Solar power, and windmills, might cover *part* of a high-rise office building's needs. (You *don't* want to begin to think about the servers and their power supplies running 24x7x365.25).
HOWEVER, there's still manufacturing. Go read up on how aluminum, for example, is made.
We *can* massively cut down non-renewable power, Hell, even a 25% or more (and for those that don't read, Germany, I think it is, is aiming for a very large percentage of its power from renewable resources within 10 or 15 years. but there's still going to be a need for other sources, be they water, wind, or something better than nuclear as we know it (now, get some solar power satellites up there, and all bets are off).
mark
Neither solar nor wind will ever be practical as MAJOR sources of energy. Not only would windmills and solar panels on a massive scale require huge maintenance projects, both being very subject to storm damage besides normal wear, but they would create SIGHT POLLUTION. We would have to cover the landscape with this junk to generate enough energy. Do you really want to see the Great Plains, etc a mass of windmills and solar panels? Geo thermal is the only real alternative to fossil fuel and nuclear.
Electric cars actually cause more pollution but relocates the pollution to the power plants instead of the highways for a net increase in carbon footprint and release of toxins into the air.
Look up the power factor on electric motors and electric generators.
Look up the median failure rate of solar panels. (Last I looked, the mean failure time was below the break even point of generating as much energy as it takes to manufacture them. Good for relocating a small source of power but overall increases the system load.)
Look at the whole system instead of focusing on a tiny portion and claiming it is a universal solution.
NRRPT/RCT
Thanks to this post now I know of a book not to buy
This is good in these times of many good reads competing for my worthy attention:
Disrupting Energy: How Silicon Valley Is Making Coal, Nuclear, Oil And Gas Obsolete
The scientists commenting in magazines like Popular Mechanics in the 1970s have been putting forward hydrogen as an energy storage and energy transportation solution. In heavy industry hydrogen can provide sufficient energy to replace fossil fuel. The fossil fuel industry is also clearly aware that with current technology, hydrogen is the viable non polluting solution for transport and industry. The large scale deployment of solar panels with the resultant electricity being used to create hydrogen via electrolysis then that hydrogen being stored to create electricity via small and industrial scale fuel cells close to the user. The fossil fuel industry must know hydrogen is the solution for the survival of mankind. In 2015 car makers will be releasing a number of hydrogen fuel cell models. There are people out there who are trying their best to save the human race and given current technology, hydrogen energy storage is the solution for heavy industry and world wide transportation. In the transportation field there could be a world wide industry in installing hydrogen conversion kits in cars, buses and trucks. The BMW 7 series V12 (hydrongen powered reciprocating engine) shows it can be done. Let's listen and follow the hydrogen energy storage path and save the planet before higher planetary temperatures bring about widespread crop failure .
Will change the world biblicaly. The last shall be first and the first shall be last type.
the oil companies became energy companies long ago. they started and have been can do, get the job done, types of companies for the most part. As such they tend to be pragmatic, unlike holywood. That means they do things in a fashion to minimize any potential legitimate ramifications from society. If electric cars were something highly beneficial that would mean they would be highly profitable and that means the oil companies would invest in making cars or batteries, or mining the materials necessary to make cars and batteries. The simple matter is that electric cars with today's technologies are not a better solution to a real problem. Before we run out of natural petroleum, we will figure out how to make it in a cost effective fashion. Gasoline stores lots of energy in little weight and volume compared to any battery technology. Finally, a can-do type of company always functions better than some political hack trying to get rich off of government largess peddling second rate (at best) solutions - more likely unworkable solutions to problems, both real and imagined.
I'd rather see foil double in price than continued subsidies of "old" energy. I'd like to see an end to all subsidies, and any future subsidies be set for only for specific times, with specific stated goals for early termination. There's no reason to indefinitely subsidize anything, unless the goal is pure socialization (leveling fixed-line phone costs between low-density rural and high-density urban areas).
Until the subsidies are wiped, we can't see how much of the foil cost is subsidized. The difference between unsubsidized coal and unsubsidized solar may not be as large as assumed.
Learn to love Alaska
Wrong.
Present battery technologies will get cheaper for a while, but eventually the supply of - say - lithium will be exceeded and the price will start to go up.
Any future battery technologies that depend on uncommon materials will have the same problem. Possible disruptive events such as development of a new battery chemistry which doesn't require uncommon minerals may happen (I'm still waiting for the mid-1990s discovery of a potential magnesium-based rechargeable battery chemistry to make it to market), but are certainly not guaranteed to happen.
Improvements in recycling may blunt the cycle, but in a finite world (i.e., the one we live in) you're always going to run into supply problems if you use uncommon minerals.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
A wind turbine can be build from cheap materials and made big enough, today. People have built their own wind turbines that generate several KW/h.
http://www.builditsolar.com/Pr...
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/